Iron Woman

No, I have no intention in doing an iron man anytime soon, but I am super excited about my results from taking iron supplements! For the past couple of years I feel like I've been getting more and more out of shape despite still maintaining an ongoing workout schedule. By the end of last year I ran a couple of 5ks in which I could barely make it under a 10 minute mile pace. Considering I used to be able to run a half marathon with a much faster pace than that, I was pretty dissapointed. No matter how hard I tried it seemed like my body was always completely fatigued. A couple of times I googled causes of chronic fatigue and one thing that kept coming up was an iron deficiency. I convinced myself that surely this wasn't the problem and I must just not be working hard enough. Over Christmas in Georgia my father-in-law told me that eating ice (which I had started to do pretty often) was a sign of an iron deficiency. This was the second time iron came up for me and made me start thinking! As soon as we got back from Christmas vacation I went out and got some iron supplements. I figured it couldn't hurt. We had also just moved to the Queen Anne neighborhood in Seattle which is pretty hilly, so I started hitting up those hills on my runs. The first few weeks it was killer! After about a month things started getting a little easier for me, so I signed up for another 5k. I figured maybe at this point I could make it under 9 minute miles since I was feeling a lot more energized than a few months before that. To my surprise I ran the fasted 5k race I had done to date! I ran it in 23:23 with an average mile pace of 7:31. I finally felt like I was getting back into shape! It's crazy that in less than 2 months I could drop over 7 minutes off of my 5k time!

Hoping this wasn't just a fluke I kept up with my running on the Queen Anne hills and signed up for another race that I did this past weekend. This time it was a 12k. I've done this race once before a couple of years ago. The path is right along lake washington and around the halfway point the Seahawks drumline is playing to pump you up and there were even Seahawks players handing out water to us along the course! Since it was over twice the distance of the 5k race and much more hilly, I was hoping to at least run it with around an 8 min mile pace and finish it under an hour. It turned out to be perfect conditions for the run and I ended up finishing it in 57:24 with an average mile pace of 7:42. Out of 754 females, I finished 10th! That made me feel much better about my training! I think I'm actually finally getting back into shape, and back to the moral of this story, I'm pretty sure it is all due to the iron supplements. Little did I know that I had an iron deficiency, and I certainly didn't think it had effected me that much! 

When I told my iron supplement results to my super smart scientist of a sister, she told me she noticed that looking at my '23 and me' DNA results it showed that I had a higher chance for iron deficiency. Apparently I'm not very good at reading DNA results since I didn't notice that! Good thing I have a super smart family :) Either way, I am thrilled to have discovered this and figured out a solution to it so I can stop beating myself up about my severe fatigue! Hopefully I'll keep getting better!

Stairs

Last weekend we did our stair climb that I mentioned a few posts back! When we first signed up I was a little nervous having never done something like that before. The first few weeks I tried to do a little training on that stairmaster at the gym. That made me even more nervous...that machine is tough! Turns out it's actually tougher than the real thing! I had no idea what kind of time I could get or how to pace myself on something like that. The stairwells were really small too so it was tough trying to pass people which we had to do quite a bit of since we were actually trying to get decent times. In the end I made it up the 1311 steps in just over 13 minutes. Ryan finished in about 12.5 minutes. Both of us got to the top thinking we probably could have pushed a little harder for better times and weren't really even all that pooped. I think it was a pretty good first try though, maybe we'll do it again next year and do even better!

We signed up for the event with two of my favorite middle school buddies, Sarah and Leigha. Photos are courtesy of Leigha's iPhone, thanks! I think we all had a great time and I'm so proud of everyone for finishing it! Go team!

Swish Swish in Winthrop

This post would have come a few days ago if Comcast was a little more awesome and didn't decide to only provide us the internet on certain days which apparently did not include the first half of this week. 

Last weekend we got to bust out our new skis again! Actually we went on a bit of a business trip which included hanging out with some pretty awesome clients of Ryans. We met them out in Winthrop (about 5 hours east of Seattle) to visit a site they had purchased a few months ago and are working with Ryan to design a vacation/retirement home. Winthrop is an awesome little town right at the base of the mountains with all kinds of outdoor activities. Last time we were there it was a little later in the year so we did a little hiking. This time everything was still covered in snow so we went skiing. Friday evening when we got out there, we took the clients over to the Rolling Huts to show them a few local examples of modern architecture and get an idea of what kinds of materials they were interested in. The clients also have a boxer and we had brought our dogs out, so Ben and their boxer had a blast chasing each other around.

Saturday morning Ryan and I met up with the clients for a few hours of cross country skiing. They have also just been getting into it, so it was fun doing a few little casual loops around the area on a beautiful day at the base of huge mountains. Later that day we met up with some other friends as well and all went on a site visit to the clients' site on the site of a wooded mountain. It's a great lot with lots of potential for sneaking a view of nearby ridges in the mountain. I can't wait to see what they come up with!

Saturday was also St. Patrick's day so I had to be a little festive dressing in green and letting Tara show off a little leprechaun hat ;) That night we made a big dinner while Ryan worked with the clients going over potential idea for their site. It was a great time with new and old friends!

Sunday we headed back towards Seattle with a little stop off mid way in Leavenworth for a little more skiing. By this point my muscles were aching from the day before and the snow was starting to melt a little so we just did a quick loop and headed home. 

In the Navy

I have officially put in my request to separate from the Navy! Pending approval, I should be back to my old civilian self in January of 2013. Having said that, I realize I don't have that many photos of myself in uniform doing Navy kind of stuff. This past week I got a few good ones!

Every couple of months all of the officers get to spend the day together doing something fun/educational. This time we went on a tour of some of the oldest dams in the state, the Cushman Dams. Here's the group that made it out for that day of fun that just happened to be a gorgeous day with some great views ;)

This weekend we also had a big celebration for the Birthday of the civil engineer corps at the Seabee Ball. One of the officers' wives snapped this shot of us, so thanks to Michelle for that! It was actually a pretty good time, but it drives me crazy that I have to wear a sensible suit uniform when all the other ladies get to get all dressed up in ball gowns...not fair! Ryan looked smashing in his suit too!

Whistler, BC

We finally made it up to Whistler for a little fun in the snow. I can't believe it's taken us this long to make it up there and now that we went, we're definitely hooked! It was so much fun! We got up there late Wednesday night and did most of the fun on Thursday. It was a perfect day, sunny skies, and not many people on the mountains since it was a weekday. We spent the whole day snowboarding, and the mountain was amazing. There were so many runs from the very top that we went all the way up there and it took a good amount of time to get all the way back down. I love that, being able to spend so much more time riding down the mountain than riding the lifts up it. 

For some reason after about 6 hours of snowboarding, we though it was a great idea to do some night cross country skiing. As I mentioned before we're pretty sold on that sport as well, so we ended up getting our own skis before this trip. It's perfect timing since all of the end of season sales are going on now. We have a couple more cross country ski adventures planned in the next few weeks too. We ended up getting the skate skis, which are a little more difficult than the classic skis that we had rented the last time. It was an interesting time trying to figure them out, and maybe not the best idea after snowboarding all day. Needless to say we (and especially I) were really sore the next day! In fact, I was too sore to really try to do much of anything the next day. It wasn't that great of a day out either, so I passed up the mountain while Ryan gave it another go. 

One Year Down; A Lifetime To Go!

This weekend was our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!! I can't believe it's already been a year! It has definitely been quite an adventure this first year and I can't wait to see what the next year holds. Since this was also a holiday weekend (President's day) we decided to celebrate with a little weekend trip to the other side of the mountains. We headed out Saturday morning to end up in Cle Elum where we were staying in a fun little winter resort. We had rented cross country skiis before we left Seattle, so we took a couple of hours to ski along some of the resort's trails. It was so much fun! I think we're convinced that a new set of skiis will be in our near future. 

It was pretty snowy and cold by the time were were done with our first little ski trip so we warmed up in our room and headed out to the spa. They had some fabulous outdoor salt baths for us to relax in! It was still snowing, so it was really fun to be sitting in a hot salt bath while having snow fall on your face. By that time it was dark too so it was just lit by a big fire at the front of the little pool.

Sunday was our official anniversary...yay! After checking out of the resort we headed further east to Quincy, WA where our main destination was Cave B winery on the Columbia River. It was a gorgeous location, and the wine wasn't too shabby either ;) In fact it was good enough for us to join their wine club!! We were convinced because the February shipment (which we got to take home with us) had a special member's only wine that we could only get if we joined. We got to taste a little bit of it and it was good enough to make us want to join! While we were there with the beautiful scenery, we also got our 1 year anniversary photo. I saw this idea on Pinterest and loved it! So each year we'll plan on taking a photo with our photo from the year before wherever we are for that anniversary. So this year we took a photo with our wedding photo at the Cave B winery overlooking the Columbia River! Now we have a tradition to keep up for next year too!

After our wine tasting we continued onto Lake Chelan for the night which was dark by the time we got there so we just wandered around the town for the night. In the morning we got some spectacular views from our hotel over the lake. It was so beautiful. I can definitely tell why it would be a hot spot in the summertime for lake activities. 

We were just staying there for the night to check it out and headed out in the morning towards home with a little stop off in Leavenworth for some more cross country skiing. Again, we are totally sold on this sport and can't wait to do some more!

This was a great weekend to celebrate a great first year of marriage. I still can't believe I've been lucky enough to be married to such an amazing man for a year now. I love him even more now than I did when I said 'I do'. That's such an awesome feeling. I can't wait to see what kind of adventures we get into in the following years. Never a dull moment with this man ;)

We're Gonna be some Super Models!

A few months ago I bought a living social deal for a photo shoot just because it was cheap and fun and I always like having good pictures of us! A few weeks ago, just in the nick of time before it expired, we set up our photoshoot! We decided on the Pioneer Square area of Seattle to get some good views of downtown and old buildings in the background and it was close enough to the waterfront to scurry on over there for a few shots. Anyway, here are a few of my favorites! Also, Mom, I'm in love with that faux fur vest you got me for my birthday!!